Tommy Thompson's TEN LIST

Let me say before we start this that I would have a hard time deciding on a Top 500 much less a Top Ten! I was a huge classic and vintage Rock & Roll fan before I was a Blues fan. My Rock era dates back to around 1955 ( I was 10) whereas I really didn’t get into the blues until 1957 or so. My love affair with these two genres of music run concurrently to the present day, but I fell out of love with modern rock (or should I say the Top 40 version of rock) in the early 1990s! However, my love for the Blues continues to grow. I’ll do this more or less in chronological order. The songs are relatively equal and cover only my top favorites from Blues, R&B, and Soul. We’ll save Country, Light Classical, New Age and Pop for another day.

#10 Slippin’ & Slidin’ by Little Richard - Little Richard’s impact on modern music is hard to measure. He recorded relatively little material in his original period, but the early stuff like "Rip It Up" and "Ready Teddy" are literally the foundation of the modern form.

#9 Buzz Me Babe by Slim Harpo - WLAC in Nashville Tennessee was my nighttime companion for many years.WLAC played Blues, R&B, Soul, and Gospel exclusively. This classic by Slim Harpo was a favorite among several of the WLAC disc jockeys and got played at least a couple of times per night for months. This was the first blues "45" that I bought mail order from Randy’s Record Shop. It came in one of the classic Randy’s Specials offering 10 Blues and R&B records for 5.99 plus shipping and handling of course!

#8 There Is Something On Your Mind Parts 1 & 2 by Bobby Marchan - One of the strangest and yet most compelling R&B recordings of all time! This song contains a haunting melody , a theme of betrayal, heartbreak and destruction unlike any other song of its era, and the first ever recorded rap.

#7 Things I Should Have Said by The Grass Roots - My favorite recording from the Beatles rock era. This record has a solid driving bass line and a rock & roll dance beat, combined with plaintive lyrics recounting a lost love and the refrain "things I should have said to her" which is a theme most of us can relate to (in my case, several times over).

#6 Dazed & Confused by Led Zeppelin - In 1969 I was in a bar that catered to American servicemen in downtown Athens, Greece. This weird sounding song by a group with the enigmatic name of Led Zeppelin was on the jukebox just begged to be played! It was worth a dime, I figured. Sometimes one’s life is unalterably changed under the strangest of circumstances. I literally could not wait to get home and buy that album. I still consider Led Zeppelin’s first four albums the high water mark in Blues/Rock history.

#5 Are You Ready? by Pacific Gas and Electric - A thinly veiled Gospel song adapted to the rock format. I just can’t get enough of this great recording. This is the longer version that runs almost six exquisite minutes. Amazingly, PG&E never recorded anyhing else of any consequence.

#4 Cry Me A River by Joe Cocker - Perhaps the most compelling live recording ever. I thought this was Ray Charles the first time I heard it. Can you imagine having been in the audience for this one? Unforgettable is hardly an adequate desciption. Incidentally, the only way to listen to this record is with the JBLs turned up to about 130 decibels!

#3 Keep On Keepin’ On by N.F. (Nolan) Porter - An R&B classic with a message. The driving rhythm guitar is the backbone of the recording. I saw this live and it stuck with me like few songs ever have. I’ve listened to it about once a week ever since.

#2 - Early In the Morning by Johnny Mars - This is modern blues at its very best. Mars is an amazing harp player.

#1 - Cold Day in Hell by Larry Carlton & Terry McMillan - Larry Carlton makes a pretty good living playing pablum jazz, but his first love is the Blues! What an incredible dichotomy! This is one of the most powerful blues recordings in our library!

Oh my God! No Wolf? No Muddy? No James Brown? No Stones? No Jimi? No Joan Jett? This Top Ten business really sucks!